Whether you knew you were breaking Twitter rules that got your Twitter account suspended or not (that’s between you and you! 😉 ), let’s take a look at

several common cases of why Twitter accounts get suspended,

what (if anything) you can do to get your account back,

what to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Sorry, Kids: Their Turf, Their Terms

What, on earth?…

You are right, this doesn’t seemingly have anything to do with your Twitter account suspension.

However, since humans now have a SHORTER attention span than your childhood friend, the goldfish (I know, right?!!! We ought to be ashamed of ourselves! ??), something I’d normally save for the end of the post has to be said now – while I have your FULL ATTENTION.

No one can protect you from platform changes. All you can do is suck it up and adapt.

So, if your Twitter account is suspended, you’ll find yourself at the mercy of a random Twitter employee to plead your case to. And, let me tell you, they haven’t been that merciful, as of late…

Now… when I said, “All you can do is suck it up and adapt“, I was only half-serious.

There IS something you can and SHOULD do to protect yourself.

When using ANY third-party platform (Twitter, Facebook, SlideShare, Medium, whatever), your goal is to bring people you engage with back to your site as quickly (but spam-free-ly!!!) as possible, then build those relationships on your own turf and terms.

That’s precisely why I wasn’t crying when my Twitter accounts got suspended. At least, I milked them for all the website traffic I could before I was busted. 😉

To that, Twitter says, “Sorry, we aren’t here to entertain every question about our policies.”

There you have it.

A whole list of don’ts and only one way to do:

craft each tweet thoughtfully,

post it manually (once),

then rinse and repeat.

Hey, I am all for maintaining/re-establishing quality content on Twitter, but realistically?… who has the time to market on Twitter ‘to a T’?

But then again… if more and more marketers stop using Twitter to promote their businesses, wouldn’t that create a great opportunity for those of us who don’t mind putting some elbow grease into it? ???

If you do want to share the same post across multiple profiles or to repeat it on your own profile, Twitter recommends that you retweet your original post.

Buuuuut… not too much 😉 , because ?

Another way to get into trouble with Twitter and get your account suspended is:

Was your Twitter account suspended due to liking and/or retweeting too many tweets at once?

Doing it ‘aggressively‘, in other words.

And it’s up to Twitter to decide whether what you are doing is aggressive or not. How convenient, right?

I once had a brand new Twitter account suspended within an hour of its creation for that very reason: I engaged with (liked, @mentioned) and retweeted too many posts within that hour.

Arrrrrggggghhhh….

Truthfully, what I was trying to do was to make my account look less ghost-towny! Since I didn’t want to tweet out a bunch of Traffic Generation Café posts (that was too spammy for my taste, ironically!), I decided to spread some retweeting/engagement wealth to the people I had started to follow.

Alas, that was exactly what got me banned! ??

So, how do you stay out of this kind of Twitter trouble?

Let’s say you go to your Twitter timeline to do that manual thing Twitter wants us to do – converse, engage, relate, be present.

Don’t just go nuts and like every tweet you see!

Give yourself a limit – let’s say to like 5 tweets, to retweet 5 tweets with a thoughtful comment to go with each one, and to share one of your blog posts in-between.

Better yet, do this 2-3 times per day.

OR better better yet, establish an easy-to-follow daily Twitter routine to make sure you make the most of Twitter within the least amount of time.

Was your Twitter account suspended due to using or promoting any tools to automatically add Twitter followers or engagements?

…if you use or promote third-party services or apps that claim to get you more followers, Retweets, or likes (such as follower trains, sites promising “more followers fast”, or any other site that offers to automatically add followers or engagements to your account or Tweets).

Totally get it.

It’s one thing to use a Twitter automation tool to make your life of getting more followers easier (but you still have to do the work!!!), and it’s something completely different and definitely spammy to outright BUY followers, Retweets, likes, etc.

This one is easy: DON’T DO IT.

Was your Twitter account suspended due to abusing trending topics or hashtags?

Twitter Might Require Tweet Removal

…we are not being overly harsh with an otherwise healthy account that made a mistake and violated our Rules.

If Twitter determines that your tweet violated the Twitter Rules:

They’ll send you an email to let you know which tweet is in violation and which specific rule it violated.

You then can either remove the offending tweet or

…appeal it if you believe Twitter made an error.

(Hmmm… Remove it and count your blessings!!! ?)

While Twitter is waiting for you to remove the tweet, they’ll replace the original content with a notice stating that the tweet is no longer available because it violated Twitter Rules.

This notice will stay for 14 days after the tweet was removed.

Twitter Might Place an Account in Read-Only Mode

Once again, this slap on the wrist is reserved for an otherwise healthy account that is ‘in the middle of an abusive episode‘, as Twitter puts it.

In this case, Twitter might temporarily make your account read-only, limiting your ability to Tweet, Retweet, or Like content until ‘calmer heads prevail‘.

If that’s your punishment, then:

You’ll still be able to read your timeline.

You’ll only be able to send Direct Messages to your followers.

Others will still be able to see and engage with the account.

The duration of this enforcement action can range from 12 hours to 7 days, depending on the nature of the violation.

Twitter Might Make Your Tweets and/or Account Less Visible

This is something that’s referred to as ‘restricting or limiting an account or content’ throughout Twitter Rules, yet there’s no specific section that explains what it is.

From what I could gather, it sounds like Twitter might limit (a.k.a not show) your account or tweets in search results, replies, and on timelines.

The only other piece of info we have is:

Limiting Tweet visibility depends on a number of signals about the nature of the interaction and the quality of the content.

Twitter Might Make You Verify Your Account

This helps Twitter weed out violators who are abusing Twitter multiple accounts rules – operating those to spam Twitter users, for instance.

If Twitter suspects you are running one of those Twitter spam rings, they will lock your account (remove it from follower counts, Retweets, and likes) and require you to verify account ownership with a phone number or email address.

Twitter Account Suspension or Permanent Suspension

Compared to a Twitter account suspension, all previous enforcement actions were just that: slaps on the rist.

Account suspensions happen if Twitter determines that a person

has violated Twitter Rules in a particularly egregious way,
or

has repeatedly violated them even after receiving notifications from Twitter.

When Twitter suspends an account, they notify the account owner via email and explain which policy or policies he/she has violated and which content is in violation.

What to Do If Your Twitter Account Is Suspended

That’s the good news: if you believe Twitter made a mistake, you can appeal your account suspension.

Sounds like you upset somebody and pushed their buttons.
My account was suspended after pro gun nuts complained about my logical and sane posts. They claimed I was doing something illegal which I have never done or heard of.

Only had the account for a week! Not worth even having a Twitter account in my view.

Everything is run on auto robots so your shut down forever. They need to hire a few in India. They work for nothing.

Hi Ana, nice article but you will find that Twitter will hit your account if their bots find you following more than 30 a day, happened to me with only 20 on a new account. One of the reasons they ban accounts when their bots find aggressive following is to make for a better and more engaging conversation in accordance with their policies, absolute rubbish is the message I sent to them. Since when is Lady Gaga or Bill Gates ever going to have a conversation with me, in my dreams. The end result is Twitter have a rule for the rich and famous and a rule for normal people, the only way to hit back is leave by the droves, just a personal opinion, best of luck

I have not really been using twitter for much traffic generation in the past, but reading this makes me realize everything that I have been doing wrong with twitter. Next I will probably check out your review on TweetAdder. Thanks for the info.

I only read the first page of comments, (there are a lot). One reason I haven’t seen mentioned, is you can actually report people to twitter very easily. If someone has a beef with you, that could explain “unexplained” bans? Anyway, I have followed you today and mentioned

I have a question about the Triberr and the Tweets going from it. I started using Triberr about a month back and used to Tweet about 4-5 from my tribe. The frequency between the tweets were set to be 45 minutes in the beginning. I changed the frequency between tweets to 20 minutes now as I am in more tribes. I know that you are a very active triberr user and would like to her if the change in my tweet frequency is going to trigger Twitter in any ways?

I never had any problems so far with Twitter and I really don’t want to pi$$ of the Big Boys 🙂

Twitter also has backhanded ways of “suspending accounts.” After using TweeAdder on my account, all my tweets were suddenly hidden from view without the account being suspended. I tried pulling up my tweets with the “from: x” command and nothing came up. No answers from Twitter on the account, so I started a new one and WILL NOT use TweetAdder again or any kind of automation.
P.S. I haven’t read your recent article on TweetAdder, so will head over there right now and see if I change my mind.
I like your conclusion: treat any traffic from Twitter as a bonus.

wow..
i have like 5 twitter accounts when i was into this before, and i RT same tweets sometimes on these accounts. although i am not tweeting as much as i used to before, right now i am starting again as I have a solar blog that i want to promote and get ranked. one of the account there has thousands of follower which reminds now that i need to clean that up lol…

I had one account suspended the day after I set it up . . . go figure! I had posted three tweets and followed eight people. Twitter help desk were convinced that I must have done SOMETHING to deserve suspension & asked me to read the TOS. I did so – very carefully – and assured them that I had done NOTHING ‘unlawful’. Well, I’d hardly had time, had I? In the end they reinstated me.

A friend of mine runs the Twitter account of a charity. She was suspended for aggressive following (actually, hardly aggressive . . . well within the Twitter guidelines) and the account was reinstated . . . only to be suspended for the same reason two days later when she followed TEN more people. Fortunately she was able to convince Twitter that ten wasn’t aggressive and the account was reinstated once more.

It is, indeed, their right. But what I would like to see is clearer rules – nowhere is it stated how many follows is too many. Is it 200, is it 10, or do they make it up as they go along? This is the gripe that I have with Google as well – when you have (as they both have) a staff of people administering the guidelines, those guidelines have got to be crystal clear otherwise decisions become totally arbitrary.

twitter support are the most arrogant suite of numnuts I have come across…

i had the same issue. I wouldnt have minded if my requests for help were a) answered properly and b) not responded to every time with the same automated responses even though each question was different.

I had 8 accounts suspended inside a few hours… 2 client accounts. This meant a twitter service that was doing well had to be shut down and pulled off my site. It was embarrassing and i vowed never to add twitter marketing to my services again.

I have since figured out a different way of running the service but I no longer and will never allow twitter to be a primary focus in a social media campaign – and i advise other marketing companies to do the same.

My suspensions were probably like yours. i did cross post, but like you different focused accounts so seemed ok. Also, i didnt aggressively follow but i must have unfollowed a lot of people and followed again and then unfollowed repeatedly as a result of using tweetadder. This can get you ousted… I did send a number of repeating tweets and this may have contributed. but i have mostly had to figure it out from TOS as support wont/refuses/cant be bothered to answer my queries.

This i have had to control and now I mostly dont even follow. I dont automate on TA except for RSS. So far ok, but who knows, i may be facing twitter support wrath from hell again…

Hi Ana, I started following @AnaTrafficCafe last night and received a direct message from you. I tried responding with a Thank You, but received a “forbidden” message from Twitter. Just checking, is that a setting that you do not allow direct messages, or does Twitter not allow it unless you are following me? Great BLOG, BTW! -Carl

How rude of them not to give you a warning first or to suspend one account but all accounts at teh same time. The same thing happened to me on FB, I was making the public aware about the horros of puppy farming and trying to get as many followers to a group and they stopped my account too. Its not fair 🙁

It seems when you use social media to its utmost you get slapped for it. The thing that irks me is the customer service. You practically have to make a full time job of getting an answer out of them. I guess it’s a true love/hate relationship.

Hey Ana,
Well misery loves company so maybe you’d like to know the same thing happened to me. I set up a new Twitter account last week for a new blog and Twitter (forced me to choose 15 people to follow immediately before it would let me tweet). I went into my old account and chose a bunch of people including you that I like to follow and went about sharing tweets and info as usual. Within a few hours I had 22 new followers and as most were very highly targeted and relevant I followed them back… only to have my account suspended for “Aggressive Following” practices. I was not using any software these were all manual follows and when they suspended that account my follows were at 49 and followers at 22. No response from Twitter support other than the same email sent three times.
Ah well, you share great tips and info here so I will be happy to follow you and retweet this post too.
BTW love the new look of TGC.
Cheers,
Debra

Thanks for the information….twitter, facebook, they all want us but only to a certain extent…making money is the key, unfortunately both see it as a one way street. It is not actually about social media and sharing its about them making the money. Have you noticed how their rules change with technology LOL.

Hey Ana! I read a blog-post a little while ago titled (something like): people follow other people, they do not follow blogs. You have so many subscribers and regular readers – I don’t think Twitter, or any other entity, can make you “a new kid on the block”.

And thanks for sharing these ‘bad practices’ – they will surely help many.

I am 100% convinced that this is all to do with automation, and those who insist on “cheating” are in fact playing with fire.

But forget about the prospect of being banned. I tend to unfollow any account that seems in any way less than organic. I think turning Twitter into a bot defeats the purpose, apparently, Twitter does too.

Really sucks that you got banned, but it seems justified. Hate to say it. 🙁

I was wondering what the heck happened when you informed me of your new account. I figured I’d just wait for the blog post to get the scoop. 🙂 That really does suck, but at least you are so good at keeping your readers engaged, it will take you very little time to build up your following again.

That really sucks. But I am following your new account. To me the takeaways are pretty simple:

1. Be very careful about letting multiple Twitter accounts overlap too much. I know I am going to be watching this one very carefully.

2. Social and automation are two words you should never use in the same sentence. Heck, not in the same paragraph. You would not automate your offline social relationships, so don’t do it online. Yes, computers are tempting that way, but that does not make it a good idea.

Hi Ana, it really is disappointing about you losing your Twitter account like this. Great to see you take it in stride though. Alas what can we do.. pushing the envelope with our social media presence is getting increasingly important today and it’s just the thin line that comes up sometimes.

I use tweetadder but not sure what you mean by “automated TweetAdder campaign” (which I’d like to avoid). Is that the private proxies they have under ProTools? Also, if you change one character in the tweet on the 2nd account or space out the time between tweeting the same tweet on different accounts, will they still recognize that as the same tweet or same link?

Sorry about your experience with Twitter. I think this is something that just pervades a lot the social media. I was banned from Mixx for too much self promotion, when all I did was post my blog articles along with a lot of other stuff unrelated to dentistry. At the same time, they had active accounts that were doing blatant advertising in 99% of their posts? I wrote requesting an explanation – nothing!!
Like your commenter Ian, Twitter has blocked me from following anyone new for almost two months, even though over 100 people have started following me in that time. Reason was my follows and followers were the wrong ratio. They didn’t tell me what the ratio should be and I have tried dropping some follows that I am not particularly interested in with the idea of adding some new ones – that doesn’t seem to work either. Very frustrating, since I am still not totally sold on Twitter anyway.

I am also a bit surprised that they shutdown your account. At least they should have send you warning, to give you the chance to get things fixed. Right or wrong, aggressive Marketing backfired in this case.
Thanks for this informative post.
PS. I just followed you on your new twitter account.

Never thought that Twitter would do something like this. But, Unfortunately, we can’t do anything about that. But, thanks for the article. It will really me (and others who are reading this article) to be more careful in the future. I was going to start a new twitter account for my new blog. But, after seeing all this (and realizing that I had to start everything from first) made me to change my twitter username to fit the new blog.

Thanks for your article that explains why Twitter shut down your account and how to prevent the closure of a Twitter account. The key is not use the automatic feature and accounts TweetAdder overlapping series. If those two things are not violated, we need not worry. Your article is really very important for anyone who has an account on Twitter, especially for those who make an account on Twitter for business or making money.

That’s quite sad that your twitter account get banned, But what I understand from “Cross Posting Across Multiple Accounts” is that if you continuously promote each link through multiple twitter accounts then it’ll be considered as spamming and twitter is going to ban your account.

The only way to avoid such penalty is to promote only limited links through multiple accounts, as you got 5 accounts so it’s better to promote 1 link through 3 accounts and then next link through rest 2 accounts. This may look natural and you won’t get penalized.

Wow, all three accounts!. Don’t they give warning before just supending your account. They could have atleast suspended maybe one first with a warning. Guess I have learnt a few lessons from your experience.
just Followed your new account @Car_LeasingUK

This absolutely sucks Ana and I felt the same way back.. Fortunately when that happened, I had very little to no activity yet. Anyway, look at the bright side.. at least you get to filter some of your followers and people you have been following.. “Winter Cleaning”.. just kidding, it ain’t funny… Following you now on your new account..

I understand that these big guys, Twitter, Facebook and Google have to make people follow the rules, but would it be so hard to send a warning to users and give them a second chance?
You’re not following the rules, you change that immediately or we shut your account down.

Who am I kidding? That’s utopic.

Anyway, soon you’ll be back on track. Your followers won’t let you down.

Thanks for the heads up about this, could not think of any worse than losing my Twitter account. Like you I have manually been creating followers and building my account for more than two years. I have just started using automation to do this so maybe I will take a step back and stay manual for a while longer.

I also have a few other friends who have fallen foul of twitter and they experienced the same responses as you did very slow and for some no response at all ever.

You might all want to take a look at a new service called JustRetweet.

I started with Twitter when they first launched and should have a massive targeted list but I don’t. The internet is very distracting and dealing with the changes in terms of service that companies can implement at the drop of a hat is frustrating. That’s why I like my domains and websites. I have some control over what happens there as long as I keep spam bots away with Comment Luv Premium!

Wow. I’ve created a couple of Twitter accounts for different niches — at least that is the intention. Sometimes I tweet the same stuff to both of them since it’s appropriate to both. TweetDeck makes that super simple to do.

I haven’t been using Twitter that much lately though, but I’ll have to be more careful about posting to both accounts in the future.

H Ana, sorry to hear about the suspension. I believe in every adversity there is an equal seed of advantage. This will surely be a case of adversity for advancement. It should not cause distraction. I’ve learnt from your experience, thanks for this privilege.

The first thing that keyed me into your blog was one of your twitter accounts. I remember thinking at the time, “How did Ana get so many followers? What is she doing that I’m not?” I’m a big fan, so wherever you are, I’ll be reading your articles and tweets.

I had this happen with Google Adwords and with my Yahoo account. I was considered a top contributor to Yahoo answers, with a very high percentage of what were voted “best answers” then one day, POOF! Account suspended – no reason, no recourse. So what does one do? Pick up and start over. That’s all you CAN do, right?

I am sick of twitter’s so-called rules. I can’t follow anyone, because I somehow reached their following limit, again. This is the third time this has happened to me, even after I un-followed most of the tweeters who didn’t follow me back.

It seems to me that you have to use 3rd party products/websites in order to use twitter to it’s full potential and I am not going to buy any of those other products, just so I can keep following people. Not that they don’t work, it just doesn’t seem worth it to me at this point.

I am sorry to hear about your plight with twitter and I would follow your new account, but of course I CAN’T, errr.

I am thinking about boycotting twitter, who’s with me. 😉

Anyway, I hope everything works out for you Ana and thank you for sharing this with us.

This is the exact reason I don’t use Tweet Adder. It is very risky to use automated software to follow/unfollow lots of people. However, I think that suspending it’s totally unfair from Twitter: just give me a damn warning before deleting my account!

Don’t worry Anna, you will be okay. People who follow this blog are aware of the situation and will follow your new account. Like I did. 😉

Sorry to hear about your dilemma… I find this bit of news VERY disturbing, since I am aware of ( and p.o.’ed at) some self-absorbed social media “gurus” who have as many as 5 twitter accounts running – all total CRAP and 99% automated.

I enjoyed your article on “Interlinking Your Blog Posts”. The point about the scrappers picking up these internal links was great – I had never thought of that. I just have great dislike of scrapper sites, so that point makes me feel a little better.

Ana, this is ridiculous! Following you again but still – they throw in this lame response which kind of reminds me of Google Adwords support – they somehow, dont know how, flag certain businesses as questionable and then good luck proving the opposite and restoring your Adwords acct. Very frustrating.

see I was just about to start automating things with one of my Twitter my accts – now I am kind of scared of using things like Tweet Adder

That is very embarrassing some time before also that kind of activity had done with one of my friend and he have lot of followers on his twitter account and i was connect with him after almost 3 weeks.

Sorry to hear that, personally I am not active Twitter user but looks like Twitter wants to become a better place shutting down accounts, but the actual result is totally opposite. It becomes harder to trust Twitter.

Yesterday after havng received the welcome message for joining your list I went to your twitter account and found it was suspended, which is a bummer. Also because it doesn’t make such a good impression right? Anyway I’m following your new account so everything is fine, and if you like you can follow me back, just look for the little robin. 🙂

But, is it Twitter important if you’re not Demi Moore or Ashton Kutcher? I mean what is the real value of a Twitter account? Beside being a kind of vip and being able to drive purchases with your tweets? Or make a buzz about something?

I have almost 500 followers there and I think I’ve received 10 visits to my website from tweets, and I follow around 400 people there and sometimes I look at their links, when I’m able to find an interesting tweet in all that mess. I mean everyone uses Twitter either for self promotion of to inform the world about what they are doing, if the world is interested. Taking away self promotion from Twitter, and Facebook, immediately transform them in useless services. It’s almost impossible to find really interesting stuff there if you follow more than 50 people. And it isn’t yet demonstrated the real utility of twitter for business and promotion, except for Twitter itself.

The real appeal for some people is that you can be informed immediately if a “star” has a new pimple, not what I’m interested into. I’m biased because I can’t see so much use for social media in general, beside losing an enormous amount of time. While I find an enormous potential in comments, also because my voice gets heard. Social media remind me of the internet bubble, empty boxes; if you take away self promotion from them they are for the most time simply useless. Except for the Arab Spring probably. Hey, this comment is becoming a kind of guest post right? Well, better if I shut my mouth then.

Conclusion: forget about Twitter and stick with comments which work better. 🙂 Also with comments you have the keys not them, be them Twitter or Facebook or Big G or whatever. They rule the net but they don’t own it. Imho. 😉

While I do feel bad at all that you had to undergo, but I am also glad that everyone including you, learnt their lessons for the future and are much more aware and lert now about things and of course, Twitter.

I too am on MMS, but luckily just managing my own one account is sufficient and keeps my handfuls as I really don’t use other software’s as yet for anything other than feeding tweets.

But I guess you really don’t have to worry much, as no matter where you go or what accounts you create, you ill have your followers right back with a bang, with many more following suite 🙂

Wishing you all the best with your new account name and we all are there to help spread the word. 🙂

Hey Ana, sorry to hear about the suspension. But glad you are taking it on the chin and restarting rather than battling with corporate(s) that find it easy to bend ToS rather than give people what they want and need! Oh well, onwards and upwards.

Ana, it’s a tough break but nice to see that you’re moving forward. A couple of things I noticed that you might want to fix asap. Update you Google+ and Facebook with the new Twitter account. Actually on Facebook it looks like you use the Involver app, but only the last tweet from the old account is showing.
I’m sure there are a lot of sites that need to be updated but those 2 came to mind first for me 🙂
btw – I added the topic of SEO to your Klout profile.

I feel your frustration just from another company: Hostgator suspended me not too long ago citing cpu issues and then they instructed me to uninstall W3tcache instead of the WPSupercache plugin I was already using and as so as I did that They immediately released the suspension..

Though the W3Tc does seem to bring better improvements, it almost sounds like they have a “special” relationship with W3TC?!

Then the same thing happened a few days afterward except this time they told me to install Gregs High Powered SEO plugin instead of AllinOne and sure enough right afterwards they released the suspension..what is going on 😕

Ana, perhaps we’ll make it to the day when we can own our own social networking and hosting conglomeration 💡

That bites! I love, love, Tweetadder but I only use one feature and that is to automate my tweets. Not to mention that I use the same tweet sets (affiliate tweets) in 2 of my accounts, thanks for the heads up.

You think Twitter would be less concerned with good content and relevant links and focus their attention on “Spammers and Pornographic Twerps!”

You know I am very. very glad now that I didn’t keep my free trial at “TweetBig” going. I tried out their auto follow / unfollow feature and did not like the way it worked. I just gave up on that idea all together. I’ll take my time and do it slow and steady.

Thank you for this summary – I have two Twitter accounts but only use one actively. However, if I do decide to get active on my other account again, I will certainly be avoiding much of the above!

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with Twitter. I was banned from Google Adsense several years ago. And your experience with Twitter reminds me of this. My biggest problem was to get in touch with them and to get them to explain what i had done wrong. Let me just say that i sent many emails and I still don’t know.

I have been using TweetAdder as well, and I have never experienced any problems with it. I have never tried the fully automated features.

I’m going to follow your new account, and I’ll do whatever I can to help out 🙂

I too got the Twitter slap recently, and as a result I started to search around for tips of what I could and could not do. I had an account suspended several months ago, and got no real insight as to why they would not turn it back on. A couple of weeks ago, I had two accounts suspended nearly at the same time. The common link: Buffer. This is a tool that I love, but it was the only thing I could see that may have been a problem. Not so much in the use of the tool, but how I was using it. I was only tweeting a few times a day on each account, but frequently I would have the same tweet on several accounts; Buffer makes it very easy to do. I have since changed my Twitter game plan and have more distinct difference in my tweets; keeping myself clear in the twitter guidelines.

Still it does suck to lose a well established account my friend…. I have followed you and passed on your tweet.

Yea, I thought the ability to quickly share on several accounts with Buffer was great…. but I think that is what got my accounts suspended. Same content on 4 accounts was bad. I got them back, but learned in the process.

BTW…. I have been using the automation on TweetAdder with a lot of success…. just very different tweets on the accounts.

This is one excellent reason, Ana, for why the chief goal after generating traffic from all these social media sites should be to build your own list! For as long as the bulk of contacts in Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc. remain there rather than in a list under our own control, we’ll be at the mercy of these platform providers.

And this is to say that those contact names should be inside a database under your own control in your own server and not at an email service provider like Aweber, Mail Chimp, etc. alone.

The customer is the business, ergo the customer list is the business in list format.

I hope people aren’t put off by the concept of automation itself. Multiplying your message by broadcasting and syndication are helpful force multipliers and it helps connect the world community to our thought leaders. It’s our mission to reach the people who want to engage in good ideas. If that means using leverage responsibly, and if it means taking risks to reach people… even if it means making mistakes sometimes, it’s worth it because we’re here to help each other. Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder if there are a few people at the top who’d rather keep good ideas from rising too fast.

Same thing happened to me about 4 months ago. 6 of my accounts where suspended and I received the exact same reasons from them. After my initial meltdown and hand wringing I did go back and forth with them with various begging, apologizing, reasoning and grovelling and got 3 accounts back! Yes they tend to ignore these requests but if you get hold of a more sympathetic ear you can make things happen. The point being, DON’T GIVE UP!

Hi Ana,
I’m really sorry to hear about your Twitter woes, especially after you’ve put so much hard work into developing your accounts. I was wondering why I kept getting a ‘ user doesn’t exist’ message, I thought it was just something wrong with my cellphone browser. Sorry that you’ve got to start over, but I know you will recover and come back even stronger – I bet Twitter would’ve left you alone if they knew that!

Sorry to hear the bad news regarding your Twitter account Ana.
But to be honest I’m not all that surprised. I am more convinced than ever that all of the social networking sites. Absolutely HATE AUTOMATION.

I have been banned on a couple of the major Article directory and video sharing websites. For using automation. But even after you take all of this into consideration. The TOS on all of these sites are heavily stacked against the user. Because you are not paying to use their service. So ultimately they can do what they want.

That is a shame and very disheartening to read after all the time and effort you have put into Twitter. I will follow your new account as soon as Twitter will allow it. Right now they say I am following too many people and do not have enough foll0wers of my own (I follow 2,000 and have 700 followers) which I find highly annoying. So anytime I try to follow an additional person I get their message saying I cannot do it. I appreciate your blog posts, your knowledge and expertise, and since I am pretty much a newbie at all of this despite my advanced age the things I have learned from you have been very helpful to me. Keep up the good work.

Sobering lesson there Ana. I’ve been building my following slowly – two years now – although I just have the one account. Keep us posted on the MMS question – I have it but rarely use it. But i do post practically all my tweets thro tweetdeck – hope twitter isn’t clamping down on clients in general – so helpful to keep lists etc organised.

Hi Cathy, I hope Ana approves my other comments as I explain it pretty well in those, but it isn’t MarketMeSuite, and I am really sad for Ana that this happened. I’d love to help in any way I can, but I can assure you, MMS doesn’t break any rules.

That’s enough to make you see red, I’m sure, Ana! I have two accounts, and once in a while, I’ll RT between them. But I use TweetDeck, not MMS, and never automate ANYTHING.

I do have some friends that have a handful of different accounts, and RT between them almost constantly, bit no adverse effects (yet).

It’s hard to imagine them being very concerned about aggressive following. I see new accounts all the time with thousands of followed Twits in a period of two or three weeks… guess that must be “different”, huh?

I’m very particular about who I follow back. If I don’t either know you or find your Tweets very interesting, it ain’t gonna happen! If I can spot a spam account when it appears, it would seem to me that Twitter would be able to do so, too.

Here’s a dead giveaway for you, Twitter: 82 followers, 12,386 followed, 8,012 Tweets… DUH! Ya think that one might be up to something more worth chasing than a prominent blogger that is more conscientious than the vast majority of Twits?

I have read your posts om Twitter and know how much you rely on it to send traffic to your blog. Twitter is one of my top traffic sources too. I want to change that but being on the newer end of being a blogger, with a not so big reputation, I have no choice still.

I’m sure you are already working on a solution. Like your mailing list and other social media platforms. I guess that is why business pros always tout the importance of your own list, nobody can take that away.

I hope they give you back your account AND the followers with it. Either way, I followed the new Ana twitter profile.

I think the real takeaway here is that you shouldn’t be relying on Facebook or Twitter for your marketing. I realize you are not but it’s an important point to continue to drive home to your readers.

The only internet property you have control of is your own. Everywhere else you are a guest and they can for whatever reason decide to shut you down.

Use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn to drive traffic to your own website, be diverse. If they ever end up shutting you down you hopefully have built enough of a following on your site to begin rebuilding.

On a side note, I too have had my accounts suspended and also used TweetAdder. I think the first time I did this I was too aggressive. I was able to get the accounts reinstated and I’m definitely less aggressive with my follow/unfollow behavior.

Good luck Ana! What a colossal waste of time this is for you. You know we’ll help get the word out for you. Your experience does serve as a warning. How many followers did you lose on this account alone?

Ouch! That has to hurt. It is so frightening that a company can do something like this. It could be devastating to a small business.

Do you have the IDs of your followers? I would not be prepared for this if it were to happen to me. Do you know if there’s a tool (or a manual way) to download the IDs as a backup just in case this were to happen. (Sounds like an idea for a great post if such a thing is possible.)

Sorry about the “act” by Twitter. I too am using TweetAdder and it really
speeds things up. I may stay far away from the automated stuff. I am now following your new account and will be sending your message out frequently.

Ana, this is unacceptable. I understand how you feel but, as a community, we have to try to get some definitive answers. Why the heck can’t services give warnings to its long-time users? It’s not like you set up a botnet, for crying aloud.

Actually, THEY violated their own TOS!

“All Content, whether publicly posted or privately transmitted, is the sole responsibility of the person who originated such Content. We may not monitor or control the Content posted via the Services and, we cannot take responsibility for such Content. Any use or reliance on any Content or materials posted via the Services or obtained by you through the Services is at your own risk.”

By singling out the “over-lapping” nature of your accounts, they imply that the do monitor and control your Content.

I’m sure they have a slick lawyer who will twist that “may” into “might”.

One of the red flags is the MMS coincidence. It would be helpful to know if Twitter suspended other MMS users with Twitter setups similar to yours.

Hi,
No other accounts have been suspended. This is wholly related to an IP ban that Twitter does when they sense too much automation / affiliate links, ie: using tweetadder. The fact that one account survived is luck, or that Twitter hasn’t yet got to it. The fact that Ana used MMS was just bad luck for us, since now we have to face this sort of post. I can’t stress enough just how much MMS is against spam, and how we take our responsibility very seriously.

Ana, I’m so sorry this happened to you. Lets skype this week. I want you to understand that it isn’t MMS. You’ve been such a good friend to the app.

Sorry to hear that your Twitter account was suspended. You had really good and well established one.
I know the pain. Well, maybe not exactly the same, because I started using Twitter not so long ago so I didn’t have much chance to get it suspended, but I was suspended from eBay once. I pushed too far and they banned my main selling account – it was shock for me. But I learned my lesson and in time I grew bigger and stronger. And will surely do even better now on Twitter. I’m sure of it.

I am truly sorry that your account was suspended. One thing I know twitter IS clamping down on is affiliate links, so that could potentially be an issue. Skype me sometime this week. After being such a loyal user I want to do anything I can to help you, even if it’s just tweeting out your name to help you grow a new following again, but lets chat.

I know exactly why your account got banned. It has everything to do with the automation software you use, and I can explain how I know this. Skype me.

Remember, we do nothing without your knowledge. MarketMeSuite is 100% user controlled. In fact, we are one of the most outspoken against spam in the Twitter Marketing sector.

Thanks Ana, I know you didn’t say it directly, but there’s a pretty strong insinuation so we are just responding because we have been so very outspoken AGAINST twitter spam. I just sent you an email, explaining the finer points of Tweetadder and why you should proceed with caution when using them. Hopefully you’ll be able to put an edit above to remove any ambiguity around the idea that MMS could have caused this.

I’m super excited about what we have in store. V4 beta is being tested this week 🙂

I know it’s common Ana and you seem like a good sport about it but it’s pretty bad that we deal with rampant spammers on Twitter on a daily basis and we see no improvements in spam prevention whatsoever. Then an obviously legitimate account holder loses their accounts without warning for what amounts to very small infractions, if that. I know, business is business but common sense should take hold at some point.

No one is perfect and no user of any Social Networking platform can be expected to remember every single line of text for any TOS or to read it before each Tweet 😉

So IMO why is a simple warning too much to offer a user?

If they offer a warning first…then Twitter will not lose users like you that add real value to 130k+ followers. Real value and engagement. Which is surely what Twitter wants and the reason for their TOS in the first place! 🙂

Twitter should be trying to protect accounts that are clearly not spammers and work with them to avoid their accounts getting suspended. Surely people who are trying to use Twitter the right way (like you) are surely worth giving the time to help keep their accounts from suspension.

Even if you did something wrong, surely Twitter could have seen the huge investment of time and genuine effort you put into your accounts to engage with people and given you a simple brief notification / warning about something you were doing wrong.

What I cannot understand is why a warning was not deemed necessary but a permanent suspension is.

If the activity of a user triggers a suspension on Twitter can it not Trigger a warning… first?

It is quite unsettling to put it mildly to see those accounts with 25k upwards each get totally wiped out. The message that sends out is that they want to dissuade you from bothering with Twitter in future. Anyone suddenly losing the opportunity to engage with 130K followers that were carefully followed and engaged with over years would very likely not bother with Twitter again > apart from you LOL! 🙂 <.

Twitter should be trying to keep users like you who add so much value, not giving you the dreaded bird boot! 😉

A prior warning would massively help to avoid people getting banned with no option of getting their accounts back. If someone makes a mistake is it too much to ask that Twitter warns them first at least once? It is so difficult for Twitter to accept that someone who unknowingly makes a mistake would want to rectify it, if given a prior warning?

Some things about Twitter (Limits, TOS e.t.c) are a bit vague so they should meet users halfway and warn them about things (that are still not 100% clear IMO) should they cross the line in some way.

Maybe this is one of the reasons why so many join and leave Twitter in such a short space of time despite its growth.

I totally understand Twitters need to keep a handle on things with millions of users (including spammers sadly) but permanently suspending your accounts is IMO terribly harsh and misguided. If those accounts are getting banned it sends out a very confusing message.

I know how hard it is to manage my one little Twitter account. Multiple accounts with tons of followers — no thanks. Don’t have the time (as I actually read the tweets I get) or energy (1000 followers was a HUGE effort for me over many months — I’m pooped).

I use Twitter as a way to spout off and find interesting people to exchange thoughts with. I think of my tweeps as ‘cyber associates’ — but not anyone I would consider a friend (at least my definition of one). So far, no one has purchased one of my books due to my stellar twittering [;-)], although I have purchased 8 books from other peeps.

In general, I don’t think that thousands of Twitter followers translates into anything tangible in terms of business success. But you can set me straight if I’m wrong about that.

Some time ago you posted a video of how you go about the process of adding followers to your account. It seemed really convoluted and draconian. It’s been a while since I saw the video, but what I recall was that you follow-follow-follow and then dump a bunch of people so you can follow more — based on some 10% ratio rule — and repeat the process over and over.

I followed you way back when. You followed me back and sent me a nice DM. Shortly thereafter you unfollowed me. (And it can’t be because I am not the kind of person who doesn’t need your services — or that my tweets are boring — cuz they ain’t!). I laughed at your scheme. It made you seem disingenuous to me.

Whatever. Didn’t mean that I wouldn’t stay on your mailing list and read your blog posts from time to time and even comment occasionally Heck, one time I thought your information was so valuable and appreciated that I actually sent you a REAL (not digital) gift basket to Arizona. I seriously doubt many people do that.

But, I learned a lesson. Twitter is about numbers. Not people. I like people better.
Sincerely,
Toni Dockter
@tonidockter

The fact that you followed me and I ended up unfollowing you is not an ordinary occurrence. I don’t actually unfollow people who follow me; only those who DON’T follow me back. And it has nothing to do with quality of tweets.

My goal with social media networks is this: bring my followers back to my blog and build relationships here, where I know no one is going to shut me down and I can take all the time I want to (like I am doing right now and like you just did in the comments).

To me, this is the best social media network – right here in the comment section.

If I hand out at Twitter instead, I’ll never have the time to build up my readers. Something’s got to give. And it’s Twitter, not my readers.

Hi Ana, I follow you when I get a chance and I am sorry for the grief that you experienced at the hands of twitter. As much testing as you have done in researching how this all happened to you, as marketers we realize how helter skelter their victim selection can be. I remember having my first 4 Facebook accounts disabled because I was trying to market and at that time Facebook was not in tune to marketing that they have since embraced and totally changed their stance. They now allow things that I used to be disabled for. Their old terms of service used to be murky and unclear in regard to what you could do and couldn’t do in regard to marketing. The first time I lost 2,000 friends, 2nd- 500 friends, 3rd 1,000 friends, 4th 1500 friends. I used market manually most of the time before the new automated software has come out and Facebook as gotten more open to this. Starting over again is painful! I feel ya…anyway I tweeted your announcement. I enjoy your articles and posts, thanks
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Hey Ana.
I wondered what happened with your account. I hadn’t seen you on twitter so I looked for you on Google. When I found your twitter reference there and clicked on it, it said this user’s account has been suspended.
I thought it must have been a mistake. I am glad you have cleared up what happened. I enjoy your tweets so I’m happy to be following you on your new twitter account. Keep up the good work and thanks for helping us to avoid getting our accounts suspended.

You’ll be fine. I think you’re really cool, but I have to admit I’m snickering at the moment. What has happened to you here is one of the main reasons I am not automating anything at the moment (I don’t think…): I don’t have to time to stay on top of it if it all goes pear-shaped.

I love that you’re pushing the envelope. I learn from your experience.

So, kudos for going after it hard, and even more kudos for “downshifting and accelerating.”

Sorry to hear of your Twitter ban, I’d hate that to happen to me too. Personally I prefer to avoid automation of my Twitter accounts (yes I have more than one and they even overlap slightly in their audience) because I don’t want to fall foul of Twitters rules on aggressive following & unfollowing etc. I’ve read in the past that programmes such as Tweetadder (and several others) can result in this so I prefer not to take any chances. I do use MarketMeSuite as one of my Twitter clients but only as an alternative platform to the Twitter website as I only automate a minimum amount of Tweets, I like the manual way but that could just be me 🙂 I’m going to stick to manual for Tweeting and adding now!!

The first time my account was reinstated quickly as it had been suspended in error.

The second time there was no notification; I had to follow up with them and it took ages for them to get back to me. NOT a nice time that’s for sure, which you know all about.

After finally hearing back from someone, the only reason I was able to get out of them was that it could have been because of a third party application automatically posting information to my Twitter account.

Ok, so can they give me an idea as to which application it was? I use Hootsuite and a few other tools to schedule posts – are these against their TOS?

They couldn’t tell me. Well thanks, that was really helpful – not!

Now, I tread very carefully so as not to offend the twitter powers-that-be. However I feel that their TOS is ambiguous, to say the least.

I appreciate you posting about your situation. It’s a great reminder about how careful we need to be when setting up and sharing information on our Twitter accounts.

He Ana
I can’t believe that they just shut you down like that. I must be hard, because I know from myself how long it takes to build a large follow-list. On the other hand I am sure that people will come back and follow your new account pretty fast. After all you still are Ana Hoffman and you still are a great blogger no matter what Twitter might think of you 🙂

I have MMS too and no I am in two minds whether to continue using it or not. Aside from the odd branded tweet (about once a month) I am not really using it for much and I don’t like to take chances with my Twitter accounts.

Sarah, Please do not worry. I will speak to Ana this week and explain in more detail, but this is all related to Tweetadder. Twitter cannot ban Tweetadder, even though they break most rules, so they go after accounts. And they go after IP addresses. We have been saying this for two years “use automation at your own risk.” We are getting blame for something we’ve been fighting so hard against, which makes me really sad. Ana, I’m sorry but the only reason the “one” account wasn’t banned is that account go lucky, or, hasn’t come up in the Twitter ban queue yet. They mean business when it comes to “set it and forget it automation.” The only thing allowed is:
scheduling,
auto follow BACK
Auto DM when someone follows you.

That’s it.

Please don’t worry about MarketMeSuite — we’ve got you covered, and version 4 is going to be make it even easier to filter and make sure that you are completely organic without losing a marketing edge.